• @mkwt@lemmy.world
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    2811 months ago

    It’s not even a very hard argument to make.

    Any honest examination of the economics of the very wealthy will reveal that there is a fundamental upper limit to the quantity of goods and services that any single individual will consume, on average.

    Once you accept the idea that consumption is bounded, then the cost the post scarcity utopia becomes finite. It is not infinite. Once you accept that the cost is finite, then you’re only arguing about orders of magnitude.

    It is certainly true that the natural consumption limit of humans appears to exceed the per capita GDP of any country in 2024. But this is a show about the future, and about a society that has mastered energies far above our own

    • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      811 months ago

      To be fair, its certainly possible to imagine some people still having desires that even the federation couldnt fulfill except for a small number of people. Like, if someone wanted to have their own private star system or something. Of course the answer for any (or almost any I suppose) hypothetical post scarcity civilization will be that they are only post-scarcity for those things needed to live a comfortable life and not literally beyond all scarcity (I mean I guess in star trek maybe the Q have something like that, but they’re not the protagonists for a reason, its hard to write a compelling story with entities like that as the main cast)

      • MudMan
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        811 months ago

        It is beyond all scarcity, though. Even pre-holodeck matter replication is supposed to be cheap enough relative to the energy density that it’s cheaper to replicate food than store supplies. I mean, think about it. They are coaxing energy together so hard it makes atoms, and arranging them so precisely they 3D print objects. In a matter of seconds. Either the Federation has the most disproportionately expensive space program in the universe or making stuff is entirely trivial. Keep in mind that if you live on Earth you aren’t doing FTL travel at the same time as you replicate stuff, so all that energy production should be going straight to making things.

        And post-holodeck you can have literally anything you want as long as you have access to one. Zero limits beyond your physical body staying inside the room. That seems to be the sole difference between Federation members and the Q. They just seem to put a big cultural premium on “real” stuff, which I guess makes sense in a world where everything is 3D printed and every civilian has the fashion sense of a 1970s lounge chair that exploded onto a person for some reason.

      • @mkwt@lemmy.world
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        211 months ago

        Sure. And you might even have people who become addicted to consumerism. (Replicator use disorder?). You can still cut those individuals off and credibly claim to have a post scarcity society.

        The point of post-scarcity is that, on average, you’re not making difficult choices about which goods and services to consume.

  • @BeefPiano@lemmy.world
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    2311 months ago

    We make enough food on this planet to feed 10 billion people. In the US we have 10 empty houses for everyone that’s experiencing homelessness.

    We have enough for everyone but under capitalism it doesn’t get distributed to everyone who needs things. Replicating more food or homes wouldn’t solve the problem.

    • @mkwt@lemmy.world
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      911 months ago

      I don’t know about the 10 billion number. But if it’s true, then we only have a 25% margin on food (10/8), and to my engineering mind that’s not enough. We gotta pump those numbers up.

      • TheMongoose
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        111 months ago

        But if it’s true, then we only have a 25% margin on food (10/8), and to my engineering mind that’s not enough. We gotta pump those numbers up.

        Or, and I’m just spitballing here, we should make sure everyone gets enough food first, then work on increasing production. What’s the point in getting to a 50% or even a 100% margin on excess food production if people are still starving to death because we can’t get it to them?

  • @EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
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    1511 months ago

    It’s almost like artificial scarcity means we could progress without having profit as a driving factor, and it’s not like people wouldn’t ever work. Hell productivity is to a point that 10hours a week can do what we did sixty years ago in a 40.

    Some wouldn’t work but everyone would get bored eventually and learn for fun or go try 52936729362 different jobs.

    • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      2111 months ago

      Some wouldn’t work

      Very few wouldn’t

      UBI enough to have enough, then any wages on top of it. More than enough would gladly work 20/hrs a week doing the necessary tasks so their lives can be nicer.

      We’d also see crime drastically drop. Who would risk jail when they have a decent life to lose?

      • skweetis
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        11 months ago

        Also, if employers know that you could quit tomorrow and have housing, food, and health care while you look for another job, they would be incentivized to make it not so shitty to work there.

        • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          611 months ago

          There’s be nothing better for consumerism than UBI…

          The bottleneck in our economy is that people don’t have enough to spend. Literally the only thing propping us up right now, is Americans keep spending and economists are openly admitting they don’t know why.

          If every American tried to save 5k in the bank right now, our economy would grind to a halt and there’d be massive layoffs, followed by the few with jobs still saving even more. Jobs plummetting their wages due to increased labor supply, now people are still saving, it’s just taking longer.

          We are so fucking close to a depression and everyone keeps pretending we’re fine just because fossil fuels drilling is at record level and we’re importing lots of cheap consumer goods from overseas.

          Unregulated capitalism like this isn’t sustainable

            • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Welp, before I block you, I might as well clarify for everyone else:

              If consumerism was important to the rich, then they’d support UBI.

              They don’t make their wealth off consumerism anymore, that shit is decades old.

              It’s like getting mad at horse drawn carriages are overpriced.

  • StametsM
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    811 months ago

    For real… I’ve never understood the obsession with trying to line everything up with reality. Like I get trying to ground it but I mean it’s the future. Who the fuck knows how things are gonna change?

    That’s why I loooooove Trek so much. Does remind me of one of my favorite Trek scenes.

    Who watches the watchers?

    • Guy FleegmanOP
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      11 months ago

      Thermianism can be fun, it’s the selectivity that gets me. The fact that so many Trekkies will more readily accept FTL than a moneyless society is… something.

      • StametsM
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        511 months ago

        You know I never really thought of it from that perspective before. That is kind of insane. I guess not super surprising. With every Trek and something new people get really upset about something that is different than what they’re used to. Why wouldn’t that apply to certain parts of the whole core concept? Does seem like it requires some loopy cognitive dissonance to get to that.

        • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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          111 months ago

          I could see an argument that FTL merely requires some different or undiscovered physics, or for something vaguely plausible but not likely to actually work out like the alcubierre drive (funnily enough not too dissimilar from warp drive even) to prove actually doable, but an economic system that seems incompatible with human nature requires the species as a whole to be different, which they arent really stated to be in trek. Of course the system star trek has honestly probably isnt that incompatible anyway, with a high enough population (and a star empire should have an absolutely huge one) and lots of automation, even if a tiny fraction are willing to do high risk exploration or military esque work just out of some sense of duty, that tiny fraction is still a ton of people.

          • StametsM
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            111 months ago

            but an economic system that seems incompatible with human nature requires the species as a whole to be different, which they arent really stated to be in trek

            This is the crux of your argument but it doesn’t hold up at all.

            The first problem is that you’re relying on the fact that humanity doesn’t evolve or change which is just patently untrue. The level of difference we have today from 100 years ago is stark. That would only grow. Moreover, humanity in the Trek universe is rocked by several severe catastrophes which you aren’t taking into account. Moments like that cause communities to knit together more strongly. Not to mention that they would annihilate any economic systems that really exist in the first place. Systems that we only invented rather recently, I might add, and are not fundamental to the development or furthering of the species, especially with outside help.

            The second thing is way more simple. You’re saying that it requires the species as a whole to be different but you’re disregarding the fact that the Federation is NOT a Human-Only organization.

            But this is also just cycling back to the first point. You’re willing to say “Yeah FTL is based off of something we don’t understand” but you’re ignoring the fact that the future could be equally based off of something you do not understand. It’s a weighted comparison.

            • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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              111 months ago

              Im not actually arguing that their system is incompatible with humans, Im arguing that someone who did think it was wouldn’t necessarily see a contradiction in viewing such a system as unrealistic even though the setting has ftl.

      • @Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        There’s a few reasons why the advanced technology might be easier to accept without question than the society without money.

        1. FTL and other advanced technologies are core elements that are essential to the premise and genre, things which you are asked to accept right up front. Those same elements might very well be hard to accept if they weren’t part of the show from the beginning, and therefore were not part of your expectations. You would probably have a lot of people get pissed if they showed up in a Lord of the Rings movie or a typical police procedural, just like you would probably piss off a lot of people introducing real magic, ghosts, and angels in Star Trek.

        2. Advanced technology is in every episode. Trekonomics is not. Something that is constant is probably going to become tolerated and/or ignored fairly quickly, or it’s likely to drive me away and I probably don’t become a fan. Something that pops up occasionally stands out that much more because it is only there occasionally.

        3. The average person is going to find it easier to have nerdy delight in robots, spaceships, and pew pew lasers, rather than economics. We are much more accepting of the things we like.

        4. Most people have very little personal, hands on experience with space travel and the obstacles to FTL. But the audience generally does have experience dealing with other people, including the types of interaction that involve money, labor, goods, services, favors, bartering and so on. Accepting something that goes against what you know on a purely intellectual level is a lot easier than accepting something that you feel contradicts your lived experience.

        5. They talk about trade and commerce all the time, which can seem contradictory to the whole lack of money thing. Bones says he has money in Star Trek 3, but as soon as Kirk can’t pay for pizza in Star Trek 4, we don’t have money in the future. But we still visit alien worlds and buy things at markets, negotiate trade agreements, and so on. It’s similar to how I can accept a seemingly endless stream of ridiculous sci-fi concepts in Stargate SG-1, but I can’t just accept the lack of explanation for why everyone speaks English, because they have a linguist on the team and keep drawing attention to the fact that there are also alien languages.*

        6. Because the science behind the advanced technologies is very soft, mostly handwaved with technobabble, and therefore there isn’t much substance to pick at. Ships go really fast because they do, and there’s no larger implications to that because communication is instantaneous somehow, as are sensors I guess. Any nitpicks that come up beyond that can be handwaved away with more random nonsense pretending to mean something, the technobabble giveth and the technobabble taketh away. Because money, trade, labor and the distribution of goods and services touches almost everything in one way or another, the complexities of civilization as a whole are there for a critic to work with and extrapolate from. Replicators solve many problems, but there’s still jobs that must be done which are unpleasant and which few people would find fulfilling. The federation has not relied on robots for most such tasks, and when such things do come up, it’s almost always presented in a negative light. Why does the Picard family get a whole vineyard, and who decides how land can be used and who gets to live where? Is there really no conflict over any of this? And even if we just accept that humans have “evolved” beyond such things, what about immigrants from other worlds with other cultures? If earth is such a paradise, one would expect a lot of people on other worlds to want to move there. There’s only so much room on the planet, especially if we want to leave nature intact… and I could go on.


        * Start Trek isn’t immune to the language thing either, even with the universal translator. Why do Klingons switch in and out of Klingonese, even when on their homeworld, at their official hearings surrounded by their own people?

      • NegativeNull@lemm.ee
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        111 months ago

        That is a fascinating observation. FTL, replicators, transporters, etc. DS9 kind of ruined the illusion since they toyed with latinum so much with the Ferengis

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️
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    11 months ago

    As far as I am aware, the lack of money is specific to Earth. Not the entire federation. Starfleet personnel get per diems as mentioned in DS9 when stationed somewhere other than Earth. You think Quark is letting everyone use the holosuites and eat and drink for free? If they want free food, they have the replimat. Even that isn’t “free;” you have rations because even replicated food costs energy (the idea being very prevenlent in Voyager).

    What gets me is that they have also mentioned that putting things back in the replicator to be broken down somehow replenishes a bit of that energy… Wouldn’t it take a shitton of power simply to turn the material back into elemental particles? 🤔

    • MudMan
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      111 months ago

      I have mostly chalked that up to DS9 being pretty bad at being a Star Trek show. Seriously, if they wanted to make Babylon 5 they should have just made Babylon 5.

      Voyager dealing with scarcity makes sense for their premise, but the point is Trek society is supposed to be post-scarcity, at least on the Federation side. If they can use matter/energy conversion to cook and travel then it just doesn’t make sense to assume any limits to consumption. Trek society isn’t just not capitalist, it simply can’t be capitalist. They had to come up with some reeeal stretchy garbage to justify DS9 having a currency and people paying it for stuff like drinks and entertainment in a world where they are still beaming themselves around.

      I mean, they have a perfectly good planet right there, let alone a wormhole that is supposed to make them a commerce hub. And they aren’t going anywhere, they literally just need to keep the lights and replicators going to be self-sustainable indefinitely, as opposed to flying around at faster than light speeds by warping the fabric of spacetime. Somebody explain to me how come Quark gets to charge people for a cup of tea in that context.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️
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        711 months ago

        Somebody explain to me how come Quark gets to charge people for a cup of tea in that context.

        Simple.

        He’s a greedy Ferengi and not part of the Federation.

        Also: The Bajorans down on the planet you speak of exchange currency. The planet doesn’t have the infrastructure to be post-scarcity… That’s, like, the entire premise for the show. They’re getting assistance from the Federation to help rebuild after the Cardassian occupation while also petitioning to join the Federation.

        The most flimsy explanations are actually just how Earth operates a currency-less society. They trade. They barter. They simply don’t have money. Most every race that isn’t capable of producing a resource they want trades. And some of those races also happen to value currency in the form of liquid metal wrapped in gold. 🤷🏻‍♂️

        • MudMan
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          -111 months ago

          No, that’s not simple. He has replicators. He owns replicators. We see him use them. Alright, so we know some stuff like food or latinum doesn’t replicate well and you can tell the difference, and presumably post-scarcity you put a huge premium on that because what else are you gonna do, but how doess that sustain an entire species of greedy interstellar traders? What are they greedy for, even? Everybody can still talk to their wall and get new pants and a sandwich.

          And why does Bajor not have the infrastructure? What weird-ass priorities does the Federation have that in seven years they somehow manage to keep around a warship with transporters, replicators a FTL warp engine and a cloaking device but can’t get the planet set up for post-scarcity? They have transporters and replicators, what’s taking so long? None of it makes sense.

          The answer is somebody wanted to do Casablanca in spaaaaace and they weren’t going to let the rules of the setting get in the way. DS9 should not be canon. People get mad at nuTrek’s tone changes, but DS9 breaks the lore completely.

    • Guy FleegmanOP
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      411 months ago

      Paraphrased from something I got hit with on /r/DaystromInstitute, years ago

      I could go find it but… reddit 🤮